The Latchkey Kid

by Helen Forrester

  Dorothy came to the door, and did not immediately recognize him. Then she said: “Good heavens! Come in. Isobel is nearly ready.”

  Isobel was in the living-room, having a five-tier imitation pearl necklace clasped round her neck by one of her student boarders, who started to giggle when she saw Hank.

  Hank had eyes for no one but Isobel.

  “Do I look that bad?” she demanded, as he stared at her.

  “No,” his voice was enthusiastic. “I should say not! You look the real goods.”

  Her waist had been firmly laced in to give her a correct Edwardian hourglass figure, and her tiny bosom pushed up. A discreet amount of padding at the rear gave her a Grecian bend of charming proportions.

  She laughed, while Dorothy handed her a borrowed fur coat to put over her shoulders. “I think you look very nice, too,” she said shyly. The barber had cut his hair and trimmed his beard in British Navy fashion, and he looked so English in spite of his Slavonic cast of feature that she felt suddenly as if he were a fellow countryman, and her behaviour became more relaxed in consequence.

  Hank handed her the florist’s box. It was opened and all three girls admired the Victorian posy of tiny roses which it contained, while Isobel worried privately that he was going to too much expense on her behalf.

  Dorothy helped her down to the car, so that she would not spoil her train or silver slippers in the snow, and then stood a little forlornly at the door watching them drive away. She had an uneasy premonition that one or other of the couple was going to be hurt; not even Peter had ever looked at Isobel, as far as she knew, the way Hank had looked at her when he came into the living-room.

  The snow had been cleared from in front of the Palace Hotel, and a red carpet laid across the sidewalk to the main door. It was a popular place for dining, and cars of every description were drawing up before it to deposit ladies, and then being driven round to the parking lot at the back of the building. Hank did the same for Isobel.

  She did not, of course, know any of the ladies standing waiting for the return of their escorts, since she had never moved in Tollemarche’s fashionable circles. She let down the train of her dress, however, and, holding her gorgeous nosegay, swept regally through the door of the hotel into the palm-decorated foyer, the commissionaire having opened the doors for her.

  Though a few people in the foyer were wearing cocktail dresses or lounge suits and there was a sprinkling of plaid shirts and cowboy hats, most people were clad in elaborate Edwardian evening ensembles. Isobel could not help marvelling at the amount of money and attention to detail lavished on these clothes. But her own costume also caused a stir, and it was apparent from the amused look on the other patrons’ faces that the character she had tried to create was recognized. She was pleased, because the dress had been concocted out of three old wedding gowns bought from second-hand clothes shops – or, rather, economy shops, as they were called in Alberta.

  Hank arrived quicker than she had hoped, having done a fast sprint round the building. He had shed his overshoes and looked very distinguished. His appearance beside her caused a burst of laughter, and two cowboys, already merrily drunk, clapped and roared appreciation.

  When the restaurant’s hostess had dealt with Hank’s request for a table for this busy evening, she had at first said she did not have one available, implying by her lofty manner that the hotel did not cater to shaggy teenagers. Hank had been determined, however, and she had finally promised one, mentally seating them in an ugly corner by the service door. The old Chinese who owned the hotel, however, had that morning gone through the list of his prospective patrons, as he always did, and had recognized Hank’s name. Mr. Li probably knew more about the residents of Tollemarche and their visitors than anyone else, and he had seen Hank’s real name given in the columns of the New York Times. Here, in his opinion, was a local celebrity, and his hostess was surprised when he carefully rearranged the parties she had booked, so that Hank was at a very good table where everyone could see him; Mr. Li wanted to make a regular customer of such a successful young man.

  Hank was jubilant at being placed where they could see and be seen, and were not deafened by the orchestra. Only three tables away, the Mayor was entertaining a noisy party of out-of-town guests, with a flustered Mrs. Murphy trying to keep the horseplay within bounds. Further down the room, the MacDonalds’ oil refinery group were ordering a dinner of the more unusual Chinese dishes, and casting occasional supercilious glances at their more rowdy fellow townsmen. Several gentlemen ogled Isobel, much to her amusement and Hank’s annoyance. Hank was immensely proud of her, and he dredged up for her benefit everything he had ever heard or seen about good manners when escorting a lady – all the half-digested columns of Ann Landers, the dancing lessons of the physical education teacher at school, the behaviour of the New Yorkers whom he had observed with his usual concentration, came to his aid.

  Isobel, though pleased, was surprised. Hank’s behaviour to her had always been good by Tollemarche standards, but she had not hoped for such courtesy in more sophisticated surroundings. She set out to entertain and amuse him, and readily chose a dinner, so that he was spared the agony of coping unaided with a menu, which though written in English, was enormously long; and he was able to say that he would have the same as she did. The problem of wines did not arise, since many restaurants were not then licensed in Alberta, so he did not have to admit that he was under age and could not drink.

  While they were waiting for their steaks, she asked: “Did your parents know you were going to the ball?”

  “No.”

  She was mystified. “Why not? How on earth did you conceal the fact?”

  He shifted his water glass around uneasily and did not answer her first question. “Waal,” he said, “you know I got my haircut real late last night – and I haven’t seen them since.”

  Her puzzlement deepened and was apparent from her expression. He explained: “I came out early, before they were up, and didn’t go home for lunch. I picked up my suit from the cleaners, and while I was dressing Ma was out – and Dad hadn’t got back from the Holyrood Club.”

  She was really bewildered now. “But wouldn’t your mother want to know if you had lunch all right, and what you were going to do this evening while she and Mr. Stych were at the ball?”

  “You nuts?” The tone was incredulous. “Heck, no! Got my own lunch. They’d think I was going to the Town Square Hop for teens, I guess.”

  Isobel smiled up at the waiter as he placed her steak before her. “It doesn’t sound very friendly to me,” she said flatly, when the man had gone.

  Hank impaled his steak on his fork; it was still sizzling from the charcoal fire on which it had been cooked. While he cut into it he grinned at her from under his false moustache. “Friendly?” he queried. “Is anyone friendly with their parents?”

  “I was.”

  He was sobered, and began to eat. He had actually had no lunch and was miserably hungry. After a couple of mouthfuls, he said reflectively: “I think things are different in England. Read a lotta English books. The life just isn’t the same.”

  “I suppose so,” said Isobel circumspectly. She wondered if Peter’s young life had been like Hank’s. Until that second, she had never considered what his early life might have been like – it had always seemed too far away to be important. He had always been grown up to her, never young – more like her father. And with that thought came such a burst of self-revelation that she found it difficult to go on eating calmly, and only iron determination kept her placidly balancing bits of steak on her fork and eating them.

  She remembered the frightful stripping away of all her ordinary life by the sudden accidental death of both her parents, of the terrible feeling of responsibility for Dorothy, so much younger than she was. She remembered the funeral and the tall, capable soldier friend of her father’s who had come to attend it and had dealt so well with lawyers and with her fat, harassed uncle, who was one of the executors of her fath
er’s will. She had been happy to replace her father with another father figure, who had become her husband. She realized desolately that though he had been immensely kind to her, she had never really known him.

  I must have been mad, she thought. But common sense answered her back sharply. Not mad, it said. He was a kindly, decent man and you were not unhappy with him. If sometimes you hankered for a better physical relationship, you loved him well enough to be faithful to him.

  “Anything the matter?” asked Hank, who had been watching the play of expressions across her face. Then he leaned over to place his hand over hers, and said softly: “I guess this outing must be pretty hard on you.”

  His effort to understand her situation touched her, and she fought back sudden tears to say: “Oh, no, Hank. Everything is lovely and I am truly grateful to you for dragging me out. The crowd is so gay – and the dresses are fabulous.”

  “Fine,” he said, with a sigh of satisfaction, as he looked round the crowded restaurant. Then he asked: “Do you like Alberta?”

  She grasped at the new subject eagerly: “Yes, I do.” She paused reflectively. “It’s breathtakingly beautiful. But I don’t think I could go on living indefinitely in Tollemarche.”

  Hank was watching a sorely inebriated building contractor who was trying to heave the evening shoes off his girl friend’s feet. When, with a final flurry of nyloned legs above the table top, he got them off, he proceeded to fill them with rye from a bottle under the table and drink a toast to the assembled company. “I guess,” said Hank, “Tollemarche is a bit raw for you.”

  Isobel also had watched the incident of the shoes, and admitted that it was so.

  “I think you’d like Edmonton better,” said Hank. “It’s really going places now, with orchestras and theatres and stores like we don’t have up here.”

  “Yes, I’ve been there,” replied Isobel, now completely in control of herself, “and it is fun.”

  “Sometimes go down myself to see a show.”

  “Do you?” asked Isobel, trying not to sound too amazed.

  He grinned. “Sure,” he replied. “Gotta get an education for myself somehow.”

  The waiter brought coffee and dessert and they lingered over them, talking of plays and playwrights. Nobody knew who they were, except Mr. Li, and they were left in peace.

  “Why do you hafta go back to England?” asked Hank.

  “There’s nothing to keep me here. And, you know, Hank, I’d like to live a little.”

  “Holy cow! You could live here – or down in Edmonton. Waddya mean ‘live’?”

  “I mean to feel alive – to be in the middle of things. Alberta is on the edge of the world, and nothing touches it, except the faintest ripples of what goes on elsewhere.”

  “Humph, I’d have thought that was something to be thankful for.”

  She nodded her head, making her tiara flash like a halo. “Yes, it is, really. If one is afraid of poverty or war, there’s a lot of comfort here. But you see, Hank,” she went on more passionately, “life isn’t just a matter of being comfortable. One wants to try one’s strength and see what one can do – and I really long to hear an expert talk about his work, to argue politics, to look at fine pictures, plays, books, and discuss them.” She stopped and clicked her tongue irritably. “I don’t know how to make you understand.”

  She looked hopefully at him. He looked very mature in his beard, which, with the hair at his temples, had been rubbed with talcum powder to give it a greying appearance. One day he will really look like this, if he cares to make the effort, she reflected; and I believe he could become a great novelist, too.

  He grinned wryly, and said: “You could teach up North – you’d find it a real struggle up there – and the Eskimos are the world’s greatest experts on arctic survival! But there wouldn’t be any theatre shows.”

  Isobel laughed. “You’re right – but it would be more isolated even than Tollemarche.” After a moment, she added confidingly: “You know, when I first came here I used to feel sure that if I walked along the highway for any distance, I would drop off the edge of the world – it was so flat and so empty.”

  “I guess I can understand that.” He thought of the miles of waving wheat, with nothing on the skyline but a couple of grain elevators thrusting their white fingers to a cloudless blue sky, and he thought of the pure, white beauty of the same type of scene in winter – hundreds of miles of snow and the same polished blue sky. To someone used to a crowded, small island perhaps it was frightening. “It’s beautiful,” he said stubbornly.

  “Of course it is,” she agreed.

  There was silence between them, and then he said: “Remember you said I should go get some experience somewhere else? Since Ma is so mad and you are going away, mebbe this is the time to do it.”

  “I think it would be a good idea, just to have a better idea of what the outside world is like. Do you want to work or just to travel?”

  “Jeeze, I dunno. I’d hafta work on my book all the time, anyway.”

  “Well, what about taking a hiking holiday through Europe first? It wouldn’t cost so much, and then –”

  His moustache fell off with shock. “Hike?” he interrupted, horrified. “You mean walk?” He hastily retrieved the moustache from the saucer of his coffee cup, and clapped it back on again.

  She burst into laughter, partly at the moustache and partly at his typical North American aversion to using his legs. “Yes, I really mean walk. If you walk you will have the chance of talking to all kinds of odd people. You can meet and walk with other young people, from youth hostel to youth hostel.”

  He said vigorously: “I’d drop dead after the first day – you’ll have to allow me a car.”

  “Oh, come on now, you wouldn’t die – you’d lose pounds and really toughen up.”

  He looked at her beseechingly: “I sure would slim – dropping pounds one by one across Europe – don’t you feel sorry for me? I couldn’t do it – unless you came with me,” he added with sudden inspiration.

  “Oh, Hank, don’t tease. You know I’ve got a job waiting for me. I have to earn my living – my pension isn’t going to be enough.” She leaned towards him eagerly, her lips parted and her tiny hands gesturing. “But you go, Hank. You’ll be glad you did. Britain, France, Germany, Holland, they are all wonderful in their infinite variety. You haven’t seen a single piece of good architecture yet, not a single good painting, never talked to a person whose family has lived in one place for five hundred years. You haven’t seen a thoroughgoing slum yet. You can’t realize what a war can do to a country and its people. Go, Hank, and see it all – you’ll understand a lot of things much better afterwards, and be a better writer in consequence.” She stopped and began to blush, ashamed of her impassioned outburst.

  He was impressed by it. “Say, you do take things seriously, don’t you?” he marvelled. “Even me! Sure, I know I need to see things. And if you think I ought to foot it, I will – but don’t expect my feet to enjoy it.” Then he added defiantly: “I’ve seen the Empire State Building. Have you?”

  She chuckled. “No, I haven’t. No desire to see the States at all – I think Quebec would be much more fun – you might do a bit of exploring there, too. You’ve got quite a lot of Canada to see yet.”

  “O.K. You’re the boss. You’re the first person I’ve ever met who cared what I did, anyway.” He sighed. “Do I have to hike the whole two thousand miles or so to Quebec as well?”

  “It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” she said with a twinkle in her eyes, and then, as he groaned in mock horror, she added: “But I think I’ll let you off that.”

  “Thanks, pal,” he said dryly, and signalled for his bill.

  CHAPTER 18

  Mrs. Stych was far too busy getting ready for the Edwardian Ball to recollect that she had not seen Hank since he had marched out of the house the previous evening. She had spent the afternoon at the hairdressers, and was now standing in front of her Stately Castille dressing-table
pinning a scarlet flower coquettishly over one ear.

  “Boyd,” she called, “you ready?”

  Boyd came into the room, fastening a red and gold brocade waistcoat. “My, are we ever dressed up!” he said sardonically. Not even two helpings of ice cream with walnut topping had melted Olga’s resistance to him the previous evening, and he was feeling irritable.

  Despite the appropriateness of her gorgeous costume, Olga was not feeling her usual confident self. Late the previous evening she had announced that she would not attend the ball, just to be sniggered at by the whole town. But Boyd, more for his own sake than for hers, had persuaded her that she ought to attend, notwithstanding the possible reactions of the girls to the publication of Hank’s book. Otherwise, he said, it would look as if she was ashamed. Secretly, he felt that it was essential for the promotion of his business that they be seen at all Tollemarche’s big social functions. He had, therefore, helped Olga to lace herself into a formidable pair of corsets and then to struggle into a magnificent red satin dress, heavily trimmed with black lace. He had also heated some soup and made sandwiches for their supper, as there was not time, in her opinion, to eat dinner out.

  With great care, she now placed on her head a cartwheel hat of black velvet trimmed with dyed ostrich feathers, and examined herself in the mirror. She picked up a long-handled, frilly parasol and a black velvet handbag, and posed with them. The skirt of the dress was caught up at the hem and pinned to the waistline with a flower to match the one in her hair; this left one silk-stockinged leg bare to the hip, in true dancing-girl style, and Mrs. Stych felt she looked very daring. She smiled satisfiedly at her reflection.